CV
Contact Information
- Name
- Christopher Curtis
- Position
- PhD Researcher
- Affiliation
- Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University
- Lab
- Civic AI Lab, advised by Saiph Savage
- curtis.ch@northeastern.edu
- Location
- Boston, MA
- Profiles
- ORCID · GitHub · LinkedIn · Twitter
Education
-
2023 - In progress Boston, MA
PhD, Computer Science
Northeastern University
GPA 3.92 / 4.00. Coursework: Deep Learning; Neural Mechanics of Concepts; Theory and Methods in HCI; Fundamentals of Platform Economy.
-
Boston, MA
Graduate Certificate, Digital Platforms for Service Innovation
Northeastern University
-
2022 Boston, MA
MS, Artificial Intelligence
Northeastern University
Coursework: Machine Learning; Data Mining Techniques; Information Retrieval; AI for Human-Computer Interaction; AI Ethics;
-
2018
BS, Applied Mathematics
Stony Brook University
Minor in Computer Science
-
2016
Honors College
Westchester Community College
Experience
-
2022 – Present
PhD Researcher / Program Manager
Civic AI Lab, Northeastern University
Lead operations for multiple lab research projects, coordinate project workflows, and support lab administration and intern management. Developed research software and full-stack experimental platforms; taught recurring hands-on workshops on LLM application development.
-
2022 – 2025
Infantryman
New York Army National Guard
Served alongside graduate research, served as 11B in in U.S. Army Infantry Scout Platoon.
-
2020 – 2022
Freelance Software Developer
Independent
Built computational-geometry tools, drone-flight simulation physics and trajectory planning, and adversarial AI for strategy games.
-
2018 – 2020
Systems / Software Engineer
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Rebuilt a modular automated testing framework and developed reporting and web-based visualizations for complex test results.
Honors & Affiliations
-
2026
Outstanding PhD Award Nominee
-
2024 – 2025
NSF NRT PEAR Fellow
Northeastern University
Interdisciplinary Platforms for Exchange and Allocation of Resources traineeship, supported by the National Science Foundation. Profile
-
2024
NSF IRES
International Research Experience, Germany
Selected for an international research experience in Germany.
-
2024
Global Partnership on AI (GPAI)
Student mentorship
International student mentorship through a lab initiative.
-
Research collaborations
Northeastern, Microsoft, and UNAM
Published collaborations spanning researchers at these institutions.
Teaching & Talks
-
2025
Positional Encoding: Past, Present, and Future
Official tutorial, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), Mexico City
An official NeurIPS tutorial connecting mathematical foundations and modern methods in Transformer positional encoding, with reference code for learning and teaching position methods. Event · Slides · Code
-
Recurring
GPT + React Workshop
Hands-on workshop on LLM application development, Civic AI Lab, Northeastern University
Public materials for a hands-on LLM application development workshop. Materials
Publications
- CIPHERGRID Benchmark: From Multimodal Rule Inference to Sequential Action. Christopher Curtis, Victor Fragoso, and Saiph Savage. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2026 (accepted, forthcoming).
- A Culturally-Aware AI Tool for Crowdworkers: Leveraging Chronemics to Support Diverse Work Styles. Carlos Toxtli, Christopher Curtis, and Saiph Savage. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), 2024.
- Office-Mind AI: A Generative AI Tool for Gig Workers. Christopher Curtis, Seth Cooper, and Saiph Savage. ACM Collective Intelligence Conference, 2024.
Skills
- AI & methodsTransformers, deep learning, information retrieval, statistics, computational geometry
- LanguagesPython, TypeScript / JavaScript, C++, C#, Java
- SystemsPyTorch, React, Node.js, databases, full-stack applications, cloud deployment